Saturday, March 5, 2011

Different people has different interest. Some of them like it, some of them force to due to work and purpose, and some of them have the choice not to. I personally don't really like socializing. I'mt not sure why, perhaps it's cultivated since I'm small. Occasionally socializing perhaps it's a good thing. So I've no problem for it.

Unfortunately, I do have problem remembering other's name. Yes, I have no problem to recognize people's face at all. But I do have big problem in remembering people's name. Normally I can only cache the name for a couple of months only when I meet the person more than 2 times.

In fact, remember people's name is a kind of respect to other. Most of the people likes to be cared and respected. People feel respected when you remember them and call them by name. And that's why remembering people's name is very important for sales people.

Nonetheless, I do have no problem in remembering beautiful and prestigious people, they are charming and I don't know why I can remember their names automatically even though I just met them once.

After I did some analysis, the problem more or less is related to my intention and desire. If my intention is to know that person or have purpose with him or her, definitely I have no problem to remember their names. Otherwise, most of the time I can forget the person name easily, even after 15 secs of introduction. Another problem is I'm not really efficient in using my memory to do this.

So how do we overcome this problem if we have this problem of remembering other's name? Since I know the root of the problem, perhaps I can change my intention. But this is hard because sometimes we just forgotten about it.

The other effective method would be immediately jot down the person's name into paper or mobile right after introduction.

If that's very cumbersome for you and you would like to be more professional, perhaps you can consider using another effective method from a memory guru, Harry Lorayne. He claimed that he can remember the names and faces of everybody in the audience of his lectures. I'm not sure how many hundreds of people in his lectures, but more than 10 people at a time are pretty good enough for me.

In his tips given, the only way to remember names is to tie the name o the person's face. The face will bring the name to mind, and the name will help you to picture the face. In short, they are 2 steps involved. The first one is to make the name mean something.

For example, McCarthy might make you think of a ventriloquist's dummy, Charlie McCarthy. For no meaning name, you may use your imagination. For example, for a name like Gordon, you can always picture a garden. You also can make a sentence if you can imagine it. For example, Kusek - See a cue stick being sick. "Cue Sick" = Kusek.

Now, the 2nd step is to tie the name, or the substitute word for it, to the face. For example, Smith. Smith has a large nose. See that nose as a blacksmith's hammer, or you're hammering on his nose with the hammer. Again, this is individual thing. 2 people may look at the same face and pick 2 different features.

That's about it. I've summarized the method and perhaps you would like to refer to his memory book for full details. I hope you found the 3rd method interesting. Of course, practice makes perfect. The best way to practice all this is to go ahead and do it.

There is another guru sharing 5 tips to remember people's name, which you may be interested.